Interlude: Why Archetypes for Your Better Endings?

Socrates had a wonderful admonition for us all: “Know Thyself.” He buttressed this with a fuller statement: “The unexamined life is not worth living.” While not everyone might equally agree with the second of these postulates, most would agree that there is much value in a life well lived and that we learn more about ourselves as we experience life’s treasures, including hard times as well as easier, happier times.

Carl Jung is largely credited for his recognition that getting to know our Selves involves much more than simply looking into a mirror. We are each of us inherently multiple in the sense that we develop different sub-selves as we gradually take on roles and responsibilities in the process of forming a sense of our IDENTITY, both consciously as public personas and privately and unconsciously as well.

Becoming a social self in a community of others entails adopting ‘typical’ role identities, and as an anthropologist I would say that Jungian (and other) ARCHETYPES relate to these role personas both consciously and unconsciously. So as we become an individual we develop certain facets of our identity corresponding to specific sorts of situations. We draw upon universal or collective “archetype” images as we develop these outer and subjective personas. A parent may take on ELDER LEADER and/or NOURISHER points of views and attitudes, for instance, a spouse expresses LOVER traits, a soldier enacts a WARRIOR role, a doctor the HEALER, etcetera. All human societies include a stock in trade of several primary role modalities which are psychologically available for identity construction and expression. These also may become aberrated or may take on “Shadow” traits in our unconscious psychological makeup.

What Jung prescribed for all of us is to seek to better INTEGRATE our archetypal persona influences in the process of becoming fully mature, self-actuating, INDIVIDUATED persons. As Jung himself pioneered for us as a role model (see his RED BOOK and articles about active imagination), he has encouraged us to get to know our archetypal animating energies as vital aspects of our greater Self or Soul. I call this your Ensemble Cast of Mythic Archetypal Characters”. In my forthcoming book (hopefully 2016) YOUR LIFE PATH, I focus part of a self-discovery toolkit around understanding 12 Universal Archetypes that were used by the late Dr. Charles Bebeau and his wife Nin at the Avalon Archetype Institute, based on Sumerian mythology and Jungian principles.

With this blog this year I am presenting one archetype per month and aligning that with a “Life Metaphor” that connects with that archetypal energy. Getting to Know YOURSELF as an integrated Whole comprised of various persona dimensions in key situations in your life can definitely help you to achieve your own BETTER ENDINGS.

You can aim to fulfill all aspects of your Self, not just one or two at the expense of others (thereby leading to internal conflicts or frustrated “parts of Self”). What Life Dream would help you to do that? This will be our topic for August as we celebrate and explore the NOURISHER Archetype and the Life Metaphor Life is a Mountain with Vistas.

YOUR LIFE PATH is Available to Pre-order!

I invite you to cut and paste the link below into your url search bar to order my NEW book, Your Life Path. This book provides you with a full set of Life Path Mapping self-discovery Tools so you can Live Your Dream, Now! (Available from Amazon, Kindle, Barnes & Noble, and Indies.)

http://carrelbooks.com/titles/13365-9781631440786-your-life-path

Your Life Path Portfolio Toolkit

If you have purchased or have a library copy of my new book, Your Life Path, you may print out and use this Portfolio Toolkit (click on the link below), with workbook templates for all of the Tools provided in the book, free! (Cover art by Anne Lyon)

2018 — A Year of Exploring Your Life Themes

This year at Better Endings for Your Life Path we are exploring Life Themes. Life Themes are those recurring types of situations in your life that together weave the primary narrative threads of your Life Story. Each month we will explore one of twelve Life Themes commonly discovered with Life Path Mapping. See the menu tab “Monthly Topics” for the month’s Theme. I also encourage you to list your own Life Themes and explore them as they seem relevant for you to the monthly Themes.

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A New Year of Better Endings for YOUR LIFE PATH!

2017 is a year of HEROIC ADVENTURE with this blog, as we will explore THE ADVENTURE OF A LIFETIME. Every month we will focus on one phase--as a cycle within a larger cycle--of the Human Adventure, basing these phases on 12 of the stages Joseph Campbell has identified in the "Hero's Adventure Cycle," from THE HERO WITH A THOUSAND FACES, 1949. (See the Monthly Process menu tab for each month's theme and weekly process.)